PREFACE 



The conception that the organism in its resistance to disease and de- 

 fense against bacterial invasion depends on biologic reactions essen- 

 tially specific has dominated medical thought, medical experimentation, 

 and medical practice for a period of over thirty years. They have 

 been years of tremendous progress in the theory and the practice of 

 medicine. Indeed, the advance, as contrasted with that of the ages 

 gone before, has been so vast and far-reaching that we have by as- 

 sociation come to regard this progress and the underlying trend of 

 medical thought and theory, i.e., specificity, as practically identical. 



The idea of therapy on a nonspecific basis seems therefore at first 

 glance a step backward, investigation of such a subject illogical, if 

 nothing worse. And as we might expect on such premises, the present 

 interest in nonspecific therapy did not originate on the basis of a con- 

 vincing theory or promising laboratory experimentation. It was the 

 clinic that forced upon our attention certain therapeutic results which 

 could not be ignored, results so startling in many ways that our con- 

 ception of the mechanism of recovery from disease has had to be re- 

 cast. 



The theoretic basis to account for the results has been lacking, 

 at least our current conception of immunity and of resistance to dis- 

 ease has been found wholly inadequate to explain the clinical results. 

 This seeming empiricism, this lack of exact knowledge concerning the 

 mechanism of the nonspecific reaction has been the chief point of at- 

 tack for whatever criticism has been presented. A brief examina- 

 tion of the subject will, however, reveal that nonspecificity need not 

 be as illogical, theoretically, as a cursory view might lead us to be- 

 lieve. If we keep the focus of our attention on the reaction of the 

 body to injury on inflammation we find that this reaction, no mat- 

 ter how produced, be it bacterial invasion, intoxication, or trauma, 

 is fundamentally similar under all circumstances. The type of cellular 

 reaction may vary to some degree, the amount and composition of 

 the exudate may differ, but the basic alterations are always alike. 

 We deal with a consistent effort to dilute the noxious agent, to re- 

 move it by intracellular or extracellular digestion, to neutralize it; 

 these failing, then to wall it off, to put it outside of the current of 

 normal tissue activity. 



If now we seek to alter this process therapeutically we have two 

 distinct avenues of approach. The one is interested solely in the cause 

 of the inflammatory reaction if a bacterium, to produce an anti- 



ix 



